1
Another year,
the sun resembles
itself
but does not fool
the trees
who shun its cool
imposture.
Buds open
reluctantly,
their slanted eyes
askew
with annual doubts.
It is never the
same,
each lap of light a
ghost
of former springs,
each ray
a waning monument
from where a
darkling star
gluts space
with
ever-diminishing mass.
The year we met,
is the immemorial
year, the year
that cannot be
repeated.
What world is this,
in which you do not
wake,
and sleep, and call
me?
The universe forgets
itself —
the idiot sun
implodes
into a fathomless
mouth,
both feaster and
food
adjourning to
nothingness
at the event
horizon.
The earth spins
blindly on.
First,
love can die.
And
then the loved
becomes
the loved dead.
What
if, in world-wipe,
you
never existed?
2
I swear, I have not
lost you.
Your disassembled
eyes
rode in another’s
skull today.
I
saw them
— there was no blue
akin
to your lapis irises.
Your disconnected
arm
hooked onto mine at
dusk.
(I
walked alone, and blushed
at
how and where
the
hand-touch held me.)
Tonight before I
slept
your mouth surprised
me.
(The room was
empty.)
It is better this
way —
each bit of you a
ghost
returning on an
X-ray wind.
Each day some icy
shard of you
drops off some
glacial height
onto an unsuspecting
face,
as though the gods
that made you,
singular, keep
trying
to make another.
The universe
deceives itself.
One
thing may be like another;
one
thing is not
the other.
Though ardent spring
explodes
upon the feathered
fields,
it is a new spring,
slate clean.
The past — if
there is a past —
is amnesia’d in
wormhole transit
to the fiercely
blazing present.
I wait in solitude.
If ghosts
could ever present
themselves,
they’d rage
because they could
not say their
names.
If phantom faces
seem to be yours,
I love them for the
lie they speak,
of being you.
3
In
park-walk past, I came upon
your
ancestor’s statue,
a
soldier patriot who served
with
General Washington.
He
has your face. The bronze
has
weathered little. I stand,
and
stand, and cannot stop looking.
Not
acid rain, nor pigeon insult
has
weathered it. I have you yet,
and
yet have nothing. A few things
we
touched in common: a bowl,
a
red-glass pitcher whose breaking
I
dread to think of. Not one photo.
Who
is alive who ever
saw
us together?
What
proof but memory,
a
weave of cell and synapse?
In
the hard light
of
a winter afternoon,
I
am cheerful in graveyard
until
I see the name
of
one of your countrymen.
Joy is eclipsed.
The sun, slunk low,
beams hard into my eyes.
Joy is eclipsed.
The sun, slunk low,
beams hard into my eyes.
Amid
these tombs and columns,
sphinxes
and obelisks,
what
is there left
but
never-ending mourning?
What
is there left
except
to live on out
our
ever-precious moments
in
their honor, and in their names?
The
loved dead
who
never come again
except
in shards and glances,
moment
of shuddering grief
and
the remembering smile,
by
what of you, and why,
am
I haunted?
No comments:
Post a Comment